NCDC data shows that the contiguous USA has not warmed in the past decade, summers are cooler, winters are getting colder

See update below: New comparison graph of US temperatures in 1999 to present added – quite an eye opener – Anthony

There’s been a lot of buzz and conflicting reports over what the BEST data actually says, especially about the last decade where we have dueling opinions on a “slowing down”, “leveling off”, “standstill”, or “slight rise” (depending on whose pronouncements you read) of global warming.

Here’s some media quotes that have been thrown about recently about the BEST preliminary data and preliminary results:

“‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.” – Dr. Richard Muller

In The Sunday Mail Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties:

‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’ – Dr. Judith Curry in The Sunday Mail

“The last ten years of the BEST data indeed show no statistically significant warming trend, no matter how you slice and dice them”. He adds: “Both records are in reasonable agreement about the length of time without a significant warming trend. In the CRU record it is 15.0 years. In the University of Alabama MSU it is 13.9, and in the Remote Sensing Systems version of the MSU it is 15.6 years. “

In the middle of all those quotes being bandied about, I get an email from Burt Rutan (yes THAT Burt Rutan) with a PDF slideshow titled Winter Trends in the United States in the Last Decade citing NCDC’s “climate at a glance” data. This is using the USHCN2 data, which we are told is the “best”, no pun intended. It had this interesting map of the USA for Winter Temperatures (December-February) by climate region on the first slide:

Hmmm, that’s a bit of a surprise for the steepness of those trend numbers. So I decided to expand and enhance that slide show by combining trend graphs and the map together, while also looking at other data (summer, annual). Here’s a breakdown for CONUS by region for Winter, Summer, and Annual comparisons. Click each image to enlarge to full size to view the graphs.

Winter temperatures and trends °F, 2001-2011. Note that every region has a negative trend:

And finally here is the Annual yearly mean temperature trend for the last decade. Since 2011 is not yet complete for annual data (though is for Winter and Summer data), I’ve plotted the last decade available, from 2000-2010:

Only 1 of 9 regions has a positive decadal trend for the Annual mean temperature, the Northeast.

This data is from USHCN2, from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Note that I have not adjusted it or even self plotted it in any way. The output graphs and trend numbers are from NCDC’s publicly available “Climate At A Glance” database interface, and these can be fully replicated by anyone easily simply by going here and choosing “regions”:

I find the fact that summer temperatures were negative in five of 9 regions interesting. But most importantly, the trend for the CONUS for the past 10 years is not flat, but cooling.

The trend line for the contiguous lower 48 states looks like this for the same period when we plot the Annual mean temperature data for 2001-2010 (we can’t plot 2011 yet since the year isn’t complete):

And if we back it up a year, to 2000, so that we get ten full years, we get this:

So according the the National Climatic Data Center, it seems clear that for at least the last 10 years, there has been a cooling trend in the Annual mean temperature of the contiguous United States. Pat Michaels in his GWPF essay talks about 1996 :

A significant trend since these periods began is not going to emerge anytime soon. MSU temperatures are plummeting and are now below where they were at this time of the year in the 2008 La Nina. NOAA is predicting an extreme La Nina low in 2012. If the 1976-98 warming trend is re-established in 2013, post-1996 warming would not become significant until 2021.

So when you run the NCDC “climate at a glance” plotter from 1996 for the USA on Annual mean temperature data for the contiguous United States for 15 years of data, you get this, flatness:

Warming, for the USA seems pretty “stalled” to me in the last 10-15 years. Bear in mind that BEST uses the same data source for the USA, the USCHN2 data. Granted, this isn’t a standard 30 year climatology period we are examining, but the question about the last 10 years is still valid. “Aerosol masking” has been the reason given by the Team. Blame China.

For the inevitable whining and claims of cherry picking that will come in comments, here’s the complete data set from NCDC plotted from 1895. I added the 1934 reference line in blue:

Interestingly, we’ve had only two years that exceeded 1934 for Annual mean temperature in the United States and they were El Niño related. 1998 and 2006 both had El Niño events.

While the United States is not the world, it does have some of the best weather data available, no pun intended. Given the NCDC data for CONUS, it certainly seems to me that warming has stalled for the United States in the last decade.

UPDATE: 11/06/2011 8AM PST

When I wrote the post above, I had concerns that the 1998 and 2006 peaks might not have actually exceeded 1934. I didn’t have the energy to explore the issue last night. This morning looking anew, I recalled the GISS Y2K debacle and recovered the graphs from Hansen’s 1999 press release. This was originally part of “Lights Out Upstairs” a guest post by Steve McIntyre on my old original blog. Just look at how much warmer 1934 was in 1999 than it is now. Much of this can be attributed to NCDC’s USHCN2 adjustments.

However within only two years, this relationship had changed dramatically. In Hansen et al 2001 (referred to in the Lights On letter), 1934 and 1998 were in a virtual dead heat with 1934 in a slight lead. Hansen et al 2001 said

The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the GISS analysis (Plate 6)… the difference between 1934 and 1998 mean temperatures is a few hundredths of a degree.

From Hansen et al 2001 Plate 2. Note the change in relationship between 1934 and 1998.

Between 2001 and 2007, for some reason, as noted above, the ranks changed slightly with 1998 creeping into a slight lead.

The main reason for the changes were the incorporation of an additional layer of USHCN adjustments by Karl et al overlaying the time-of-observation adjustments already incorporated into Hansen et al 1999. Indeed, the validity and statistical justification of these USHCN adjustments is an important outstanding issue.

============================================================

I’ve prepared a before and after graph using the CONUS values from GISS in 1999 and in 2011 (today).

Annual and five-year running mean surface air temperature in the contiguous 48 United States (1.6% of the Earth’s surface) relative to the 1951-1980 mean. [This is an update of Figure 6 in Hansen et al. (1999).]

So clearly, the two graphs are linked, and 1998 and 1934 have swapped positions for the “warmest year”. 1934 went down by about 0.3°C while 1998 went up by about 0.4°C for a total of about 0.7°C.

And they wonder why we don’t trust the surface temperature data.

In fairness, most of this is the fault of NCDC’s Karl, Menne, and Peterson, who have applied new adjustments in the form of USHCN2 (for US data) and GHCN3 (to global data). These adjustments are the primary source of this revisionism. As Steve McIntyre often says: “You have to watch the pea under the thimble with these guys”.

The post on Muller is a little long in the tooth but I do need to correct something.

The comment was that I said NOAA was predicting an “extreme” La Nina in 2012. That was true when I wrote it, but since then the October 31 forecast has come out and I used that in my most recent posting on this at the Cato site:

We are currently experiencing another — for now — moderate La Niña, or the cold phase of El Niño. Satellite temperatures, as of this writing, have dropped below where they were in the previous La Niña of 2008, so 2011 isn’t going to be particularly warm compared to the average of the last 15 years.

In addition, the latest forecast from the Department of Commerce’s Climate Prediction Center is for the current La Niña to become stronger and persist through at least the first half of 2012:

La Niña forecast, October 31, 2011. La Niña conditions exist when the temperature anomaly is below -0.5°C. The ensemble mean of the current forecast (dashed line) is for colder conditions than now to persist for at least the first half of next year.

Consequently, 2012, like 2011, is not likely to be particularly warm when compared to the last 15 years.

Post navigation

Alternatively you can just ask folks how the tomatoes in the garden have worked out… 🙂
I live in the UK, and I’ve now officially given up on tomatoes after wasting my time those past 4 summers. 🙁REPLY: Maybe we need a global garden tomato success index as a proxy for temperature – Anthony

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November 5, 2011 6:10 pm

Theo Goodwin

I do not think the phrase “global warming” means what the Warmista think it means.

I believe that you will find, as I did when I looked, that the recent rise in temperatures along the Eastern Seaboard, including the Northeast came after a decline in their average temperatures from 1950 to 1965 approximately. (See posts on the topic at Bit Tooth Energy and on one of the effects of that drop on the black capped chickadee .

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November 5, 2011 6:19 pm

Stephen Brown

Avid UK gardener here and I, too, have given up on tomatoes; I’ve even given up on trying to grow chillies and peppers in the greenhouse. They simply don’t produce. I’ve spent the last two growing seasons experimenting with what are known as cold-weather crops with some success.
I can no longer grow the proliferation of crops with which I am so familiar. It is just not warm enough for long enough.

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November 5, 2011 6:19 pm

pat

Whoa. Are the NASA/NOAA/EPA outright lying? While i was aware of a general cooling trend, that shows a complete reversal of the entire 1980-1998 warming trend.

There never was any ‘global’ warming,
which necesarily means that temperatures rise everywhere,
whereas in truth much of the world actually cooled off
over the last 50 years (Antarctica and high-latitude southern oceans)
and only another part (northern latitudes) actually warmed much.
GW is nothing but a two-word lie when applied
to a pseudo-science ‘average temperature anomaly’,
which as a global-status indicator is a 100% fraud.
Their current ‘global-wilding’ mantra is even more pathetic.

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November 5, 2011 6:41 pm

Jay Davis

I’m going to join the others here and say my own “seat of the pants” impression is that it has been cooler overall, summer and winter, over the last several years. Sure, here in Maryland we had a month long spell this summer of 90+ days, but the heat was late getting here, and it cooled off fast afterward. In other words, the growing season was too short this year for what we planted. Our garden was a disaster. Last year was little better. And my impression is that the winters for the last few years have had longer periods of bitter cold. In fact, last winter I put a heat lamp in the chicken house to help keep it warmer at night. But I’m not a climate scientist, just an accountant. What do I know about climate.

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November 5, 2011 6:47 pm

Matt in Houston

Great article. Nothing like the cold hard facts slapping the warmistas in the face. Of course I am sure the warmistas will tell us that CONUS is not climate so this data means nothing blah blah blah…sure and Santy Claus will be right down the chimney. Perhaps Dr. Muller should turn his PhD credentials into the nearest Al Gore fan club in exchange for some nice robes and other church of Gore paraphenalia…while I was still working at JSC we had a plaque on the wall that read “In God we trust, all others bring data” -this article nails it.
While at JSC I was also privy to a few 2nd hand emails from Mr. Rutan and his comments at one of the last few Shuttle launches and being in the presence of Mr. John Holdren…something about “I must turn away lest i sully my hands with the blood of a fool” …I like Mr. Rutan very much, smart man, brilliant engineer. He has some great charts floating around on the web with his take on globull warming from a few years ago, as I recall they were very well put together, a quick google search will turn them up if anyone is interested.

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November 5, 2011 6:57 pm

tokyoboy

Quite OT, but the newest five reviews to Donna’s book are all from the CAGW camp.
So desperate…….

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November 5, 2011 6:58 pm

Mr.D.Imwit

In reply to JohnWho,
It’s obvious that CO2 is putting out the fire,after all everyone knows about CO2 fire extinguishers.Lets have more CO2 at hand just in case Globull Warming gets out of control.

Hello IPCC, UNFCCC, GREEN PEACE, CARNEGIE Instituion of science and others; looking forward to hearing from all of you!!!!
Challenge to IPCC / UNFCCC, SHAME ON YOU
Solution to CC and Power crisis
Dear Dr. Pachauri and Mr. Algore,
Please give me either one scientific reason/ theory that justifies CC is due to gases OR STOP ACCUSING GASES for CC. Just accusation is not science. CC by gases is impossible. Please visit devbahadurdongol.blogspot.com for solutions to CC and ‘power crisis’. Summary is attached for your convenience. I have also explained the mistake being done in the hydropower engineering and, its correction can give us unlimited hydropower.
Challenger,
Dr. Dev
Email: dev.dangol@yahoo.co.uk
“already sent to the addressees, green peace and many others throughout the world”

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November 5, 2011 7:12 pm

Cirrius Man

Mike, Gavin, don’t stress…
In a few years this data will be homoginized, adjusted, corrected and smoothed and all will be good again 🙂

I have just read The Inconvenient Skeptic by John Kehr. He addresses the long term temperature trends in considerable detail and makes some extremely interesting points about trends as well as Radiative Heat Transfer. I am keen to hear views and reviews of John Kehr’s work – from my reading of it, in spite of the appalling editing quality of the book (Kindle version), it is a ground breaking study, but then, I am only an architect. What do you say Willis?

To follow up on my last comment and to demonstrate that I am not OT one of the points John Kerr makes from his study of ice core data and a comparison of the Holocene with the Eemian is that the last 1,000 years is the coolest 1,000 year period in the last 9,000 years – a statistic that puts this discussion of the last 15 years into perspective!

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November 5, 2011 7:25 pm

Gail Combs

Hexe Froschbein says:
November 5, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Alternatively you can just ask folks how the tomatoes in the garden have worked out… 🙂
I live in the UK, and I’ve now officially given up on tomatoes after wasting my time those past 4 summers. 🙁
REPLY: Maybe we need a global garden tomato success index as a proxy for temperature – Anthony
________________________________________
Not a bad idea Anthony. Plants do not LIE. They also say MORE CO2 please.

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November 5, 2011 7:28 pm

Sandy

I wonder if 1934 really has been beaten.

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November 5, 2011 7:30 pm

ROM

Burt Rutan says:
November 5, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Yes THAT Burt Rutan.
Ah! THAT Burt Rutan! Who’s Burt Rutan?
________________________________________
In the world of my flying hobby THAT Burt Rutan is one of the most highly regarded engineers and persons ever in aviation, aerodynamics, aero structures and just plain good old fashioned innovative engineering of a standard beyond any other’s plus a common sense approach to life and the world around us that is rarely matched on this planet.
And this is from an old Australian power and glider pilot who will never be lucky enough to meet THAT Burt Rutan in person.
REPLY: Actually that comment wasn’t from the real Burt Rutan, it was from some faker in the UK. Email and IP didn’t match, so I deleted it. I’m honored that Burt follows WUWT, and emails me tips. – Anthony

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November 5, 2011 7:53 pm

Chris Nelli

Here’s the issue. Even if 2012 is cold, and 1997-2012 rss data shows no trend (16 years), the warmistas say that the trend can be masked by enso events/aerosols/etc. Even if that is true, how strong can CO2 be if it can be masked for 16 years? Proverbial mountain out of a molehill, or a solution (global control of energy) looking for a problem.

It does not matter as long as the progressives are in control of the world economies and the political structures. They will continue their barrage of climate control policies. The only way to stop this is by the vote. What is it that people don’t understand? What will happen if they win again? Hmmmm?

First snow seen on the mountains on mid Vancouver Island today. Windchill down to minus one Celsius prophesied. Current temperature outside my back door 2 Celsius. That’s about fifty metres above local mean sea level at 8:30pm PST.
It’s definitely cooler than usual. Although this only Weather you understand.

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November 5, 2011 8:31 pm

~FR

Isn’t the issue here exactly *which* warming we are talking about?
If I am not mistaken, there is a real warming trend since the LIA, and a stall of a decade or so does not necessarily mean that we have reached the top of this alternation.
Then there is a speculative AGW trend caused somehow by CO2. Such a trend, if it was real, should NOT have stalled as there is more CO2 than ever in the atmosphere.

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November 5, 2011 8:37 pm

J. Felton

It’s not just the US. Up here on the West Coast of Canada, we’ve had colder temperatures as well, with this winter looking to be no exception. Snow’s expected, and the summer was nothing if not gray.
Also, one question. Forgive me if I sound ignorant but I was wondering, when it quotes Pat Michael’s, GWPF essay,
” A significant trend since these periods began is not going to emerge anytime soon. MSU temperatures are plummeting and are now below where they were at this time of the year in the 2008 La Nina. NOAA is predicting an extreme La Nina low in 2012. If the 1976-98 warming trend is re-established in 2013, post-1996 warming would not become significant until 2021.”
Does this mean NOAA is predicting another La Nina for 2012, aside from the one predicted this year, ( and the one that occured last year as well? ) Or does it mean that this year’s La Nina will result in a low in 2012?

Cooler in the winters and warmer in the summers here in Texas and south central USA. It makes me wonder if lower water vapor content is allowing the extremes to grow. Is humidity/dew point tracked in any of the temperature records? If not, is a temperature record really indicative of heat content? I don’t see how it could be.

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November 5, 2011 8:46 pm

Crispin in Waterloo

@J Felton
This year’s La Nina will continue well into next year.
As the AMO and PDO are both negative, and going ever moreso, it is not clear when the next El Nino will start. If someone from the Landscheidt camp is following perhaps they can comment. Landscheidt predicted a major drought in 2018 for the USA but I don’t recall if that coincided with an El Nino event.

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November 5, 2011 9:07 pm

Darrin

Here in Oregon, summer finally got started in August and was over mid Sept. Got to say I have to agree with those temp. maps. Of course that’s only “weather”. Seeing as how it is already another La Nina year I’m wondering just how much summer we’ll get in 2012.

Yes….but….it’s climate change….so it fits the models….It’s warmcold! Last night I had the dubious pleasure of watching a Discovery Channel program where climate mitigation efforts are presented. One was a ‘sunshade’ in space. Only one million trillion dollars to set up. C’mon. We can do it. It might help. Freeze your tomatoes in July, that is. Then, blankets for the Greenland Icecap, to cover lakes that act like giant meltwater lenses (yes, they presented this as science), hence keeping the glaciers cool. Gee, a bit cheaper, and makes Greenland look like a giant quilt, but hey. What’s a few hectares of destroyed seabird habitat. I’m about to head back to Oilberta, where it is clearly colder this year than last.

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November 5, 2011 9:15 pm

peterhodges

Anthony
Forget not, by the NCDC’s own admission:
“The cumulative effect of all adjustments is approximately a one-half degree Fahrenheit warming in the annual time series over a 50-year period from the 1940’s until the last decade of the century. ”http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html#QUAL
And the trend lines are interesting, but look at the actual difference in temperatures…i.e. if I run May for California, the trend is -4.82F/decade, while the last 2 Mays are actually 10-11F colder than May ten years ago…

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November 5, 2011 9:18 pm

Anton

Summer was pretty hot here in Florida, but this last week has been the coolest I can remember this early in the year. I’ve actually had to run the central heating at night and well into the day. Last winter was miserably cold, but according to the Warmists was the warmest on record. Go figure. Billions of dollars and PR companies can achieve through the media what direct observation and common sense cannot: a relentless doom and gloom perspective designed to sell papers and enrich environmental organizations, green investors, political interests, and shameless scientists. Don’t these partisan hacks realize that at some point, everyone is going to know they lied, and when that happens, they will never be believed again, and may ever after be unemployable?

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November 5, 2011 9:20 pm

Bill Treuren

I think it’s fair to say that the data for the US shows cooling but in reality if you look at the data from the last hundreds of years there has been a warming trend globally.
Problem is that the trend without the noise looks to be quiet linear. That is no real hint of CO2 acceleration.
I am firmly in the camp of, there is no crisis. There is a call to the central planners, for a flagelent reaction to an evil man, CAGW is the place where we all need to focus and there is no catastrophic.
Bill

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November 5, 2011 9:26 pm

westhighlander

Of course it was just weatha — BUT the recent Een of halloween (10/29-30/2011) “wintah-type” Nah-easta, as we would call it, up/down-heah in New England — from which some of us ahhh still gettin ahh powah back — set many a recahd — including:
Most Snow in Octobah in quite a numbah of places
But maybe most significant and while just weatha and outside of New England at that — Central Pahk in New Joik City (changing accents accompany changing climate) had the first snow of 1″ or greater in October since the Civil War
see http://weathernationheadlines.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-30-historic-northeast-snowstorm.html
Saturday, October 29, 2011
October 30: Historic Northeast Snowstorm (earliest snow since Civil War for New York City)
1.3″ Central Park in New York City. Snowiest October since records were first kept in 1869.
Thunder-snow reported at Harrisburg, PA yesterday.
15″ snowfall estimate in Lancaster, PA (thanks to weather spotter Volker Kruhoeffer for providing that report).
42 F. high in Baltimore and Washington D.C. (Reagan Airport) Saturday, coldest October 29 ever recorded.
Snow has fallen in Washington D.C. only 15 times in October since the late 1800s (Capital Weather Gang).

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November 5, 2011 9:30 pm

Eric

Currently 44F in Carlsbad, CA at 9:30 pm…that is COLD for Nov 4…

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November 5, 2011 9:40 pm

David Corcoran

It’s been freezing in Southern California. Literally. Last winter our birdbaths froze solid in Oceanside, CA, in San Diego County. I expect the same to happen this month, before the onset of wither.

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November 5, 2011 9:43 pm

pochas

Winters cooling fast, summers not so fast. This should be telling us something. What?

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November 5, 2011 9:52 pm

Ryan Welch

I live in Texas about halfway between Houston and Dallas and last winter was the coldest and the longest I have seen in 13 years living on my property by a fair margin. We have a digital temperature recorder that records the current temperature as well as the daily lows and highs but when all the plumbing in the barn froze so hard that it broke all the pipes I knew that was an exceptional cold wave. Now with another strong la Nina forming I am insulating my pipes as if I lived in Nebraska.

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November 5, 2011 10:05 pm

J. Felton

@ Crispin in Waterloo
Thanks, the clarification is much appreciated.

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November 5, 2011 10:15 pm

John F. Hultquist

Hexe F., Gail C., and Anthony
RE: tomatoes as climate proxies
I live in central Washington State near Ellensburg. Elevation is 2,240 feet. I paid $1.79 for a packet of seeds and 12 plants produced a dozen red tomatoes, another dozen colored in the kitchen. Thus, I recouped my out-of-pocket cost. I threw about 50-75 pounds of dark green ones into the compost.
The real problem was a cold spring. Very slow growth up to blossom time (late) and then night temperatures not getting to 50 degrees F. So fruit set was way late. The only reason any fruit developed was because the first two weeks of September were warm and then we did not have killing frost until just a few days ago. Okay, I covered the plants for a couple of nights in October. Note low temps in late Oct. here:http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/climate/temp_graphs.php?stn=KYKM&submit=Change+Station&wfo=pdt
Wine grapes in central Washington were likewise delayed – discounting last fall’s killing early cold – just writing about this year’s crop. Grape growers keep very good records over long periods of time. One might do a study of places such as Côte-d’Or where wine grapes have been grown since before there was France.

It would seem that any annual anything that fits the dogma is trend support and anything that does not even if for 10 or more yeas is something else. It is also good to remind the great unwashed masses that nothing is evenly distributed across the continent now extrapolate that to the planet and put that one number world wide anything in file 13 where it belongs.

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November 5, 2011 10:32 pm

Mike McMillan

Sandy says:
I wonder if 1934 really has been beaten.
Of the 80 Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin surface station USHCN Version 1 raw temperature records that I have, Version 2 “adjusted” 44 of the 1934 temperatures down, some by large amounts. The remainder were left alone, or adjusted upward, but not by as much as the typical downward adjustment. Most 1998 temps were left alone or fiddled only slightly. As close as 1998 was to being as warm as 1934, I don’t doubt that all the finagling moved ’34 below the recent peak.

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November 5, 2011 10:53 pm

mrrabbit

Last 4 straight years here in the SF Bay area summers have been very cool. At best a few days above 100 F, when normally there would be easily a dozen.
Tomatoes have been a pain in the ass each year…whereas in the 80s and 90s the ease of growing tomatoes was right up there with zucchini.
Each year I’m having to seriously curtail watering…have sacks ready in case of surprise Spring frost and early Fall frost…still no matter what I do – I’m lucky to use 20% percent of what grows – that is if the plants don’t succumb to fungus and viruses that become very prevalent when it is too cold.
I literally planted 3 times as many plants this year as I normally do (12) hoping to get just 4. Actually ended up with 7. 2 got wiped out by fungus early October. Fingering I’d better not waste my luck – if we didn’t eat the tomatoes in 2 days – they became canned Salsa.
Tore up the entire garden just last weekend…leaving behind only lettuce, scallions. bell pepper and one eggplant.
=8-)

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November 5, 2011 10:57 pm

joe

Not sure if it was mentioned yet but Dr. Muller will be on Bill Wattenburg’s radio show tomorrow night on KGO 810 AM from the San Francisco area starting at 10 PM PST and might go for at least a few hours according to Dr. Wattenburg. They will be talking about BEST apparently and Dr. Wattenburg said tonight that he’s a bit of a skeptic as far as the overall impact of global warming or man’s role in it but he seems to be uite a fan of Dr. Muller as he’s had him on the show a few times before and they discussed things like physics iirc…
thought i’d post in case anyone was interested…

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November 5, 2011 11:11 pm

Beth Cooper

Oh the rate of warmin’s slowin’
And the skepticism’s growin’
And the snow it keeps on snowin’
And the data it is showin’
Which way the wind is blowin….
Just sayin’.

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November 5, 2011 11:16 pm

RockyRoad

John F. Hultquist says:
November 5, 2011 at 10:17 pm

Hexe F., Gail C., and Anthony
RE: tomatoes as climate proxies
I live in central Washington State near Ellensburg. Elevation is 2,240 feet. I paid $1.79 for a packet of seeds and 12 plants produced a dozen red tomatoes, another dozen colored in the kitchen. Thus, I recouped my out-of-pocket cost. I threw about 50-75 pounds of dark green ones into the compost.

As an alternative, individually wrap each of those dark green tomatoes in a quarter sheet of newspaper, place them in an open cardboard box three or four deep (never in a plastic bucket), put the boxes on the floor of your basement or in the garage (anywhere cool but not freezing) and check them all once a week simply by giving them a pinch (what else are tomatoes for, right?). Unwrap the soft ones and you’ll find they’re red or pretty close to it; finish those off in a window sill that need more ripening and you’ll be enjoying tasty tomatoes into December and your cost/benefit ratio will improve dramatically.
Without that approach, growing tomatoes where I live (eastern Idaho around 4,500 ft elev.) would largely be a waste of time. (I planted 19 plants this year and harvested over 150 gallons of tomatoes–a lot of them were green by season’s end but many actually ripened on the vine for a change (as opposed to last year’s crop). We’ve used a lot of newspaper lately but what else is it good for without a parakeet? This year I gave the majority of my tomato crop away which makes my neighbors and relatives happy!)

Richard Muller is schedualed for two hours with Dr. Bill Wattenberg on KGO radio Sunday evening after 10 pm if anyone is interested.

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November 6, 2011 12:17 am

LazyTeenager

Trying to establish long term trends from 10, year periods looks pretty dangerous to me especially considering the amount of random variation visible to anyone with eyes in these graphs.
And of course la nina pops up in this period so by putting a strong la Nina at the end of the 10 year period you are definitely going to get a negative trend.

Jumping on the Tomato Thread…
I didn’t bother growing tomatoes at all this year. More surprising, I had no volunteers either. ( I usually get many as a lot of tomatoes hit the ground and I use a modified no-till in many squares, plus have gaps between the pavers where they sprout). Only year I got decent tomatoes was 1998 ( I have a shaded somewhat cool garden), since then it’s been downhill.
OTOH, I have some kale that did wonderfully… in SUMMER. Many things that usually croak in summer heat had No Problem this year. I did have to abandon the garden in July (leaving it in the hands of the spouse) as I ran off to work a contact for a few months. What survived was all cool tolerant. Cabbages, kales, etc.
We’ve been having a significant cold turn (near San Francisco, California) and then there was that snow in Arizona…
BTW, don’t toss green tomatoes. Fried Green Tomatoes are very very nice 😉
So yes, a ‘tomato index’ would be a very good and reliable thing… You can also use Runner Beans to measure heat waves. They have flower drop when it’s very hot. (Over somewhere around 95 F they don’t set well). So Tomatoes tell you when nights stay above 50 F and Runner Beans tell you when days max over 95 F. Other plants have other ‘calibrations’ 😉 Most seeds won’t sprout below 50 F soil and many prefer about 70 F, so late springs show as late sprouting (thus later harvests).
At any rate, it’s cooling, rather a lot, and it’s not going to shift to warming any time soon. Anyone with a garden knows that. What the ‘fiddled with records’ say isn’t all that useful to me anymore…
Ski resorts closed late last year. They are opening early this year (one opened after that Halloween Storm somewhere in the North East IIRC). Ski resorts don’t lie either… can’t have snow if it’s not cold. So a record of open / close dates is useful. Seems to me I remember skiing this year well into summer. Yup, a google finds it:http://www.google.com/search?q=fathers+day+skiing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
And that silly Warmer nonsense about more snow from being warmer is just a dog that won’t hunt. When it’s warm, you get rain, not snow.
At any rate, it’s good to see even the dodgy data we do have is showing some cooling. That’s got to really ‘frost the shorts’ of the Data Doctors in charge of it 😉 And with reality providing limits on how much fudge you can push, well, it’s got to be an interesting time in Adjustments Land as they decide where their Jump The Shark moment will come… IMHO, of course.

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